Cycle routes shown prominently BESIDES the streets differentiated by colour and size based on importance (other maps show cycle routes instead of streets so that you don't know what kind of street the route is on, bad for planning).

Navigation - Highly sophisticated Autorouting specialised for cycling. Don't cycle on big streets anymore because you got lost. The VeloMap focuses very strictly on road cycling, commuting and touring/trekking. Maps trying to focus for many purposes can never be as good.

Easyinstallation to Garmin Mapsource, Garmin Basecamp or Qlandkarte GT for on PC planning.

Good Documentation because everything you want and need to know for using the maps is found on VeloMap.org

Contourlines based on the best free (as in beer) data - viewfinderpanoramas.org - as separate download for most countries. Much higher quality in mountainous regions than the mostly used void filled SRTM3".

Map Incomplete? You can participate and Add missing to Openstreetmap. Every Week the maps become better and more complete! If you think anything "bicycle relevant" features are missing (but recorded and documented in OSM), drop a comment and I will try to add it.

New Here?:

Garmin offerst two seperate Autorouting modes supported by all GPS and Software. Shorter Distance will actually be shorter than on any other Garmin map I have tried (even though high traffic streets are avoided). Faster time finds nicer routes with even less traffic and makes some detours if needed.

Autorouting using Mapsource 6.16 or Basecamp v3 up to 200km trip distance without via-points. Around 100-150km with Oregon/Dakota/2010_Generation_etrex/GPSmaps. If you route over longer distances, cities are avoided except for cycleroutes crossing cities.

Map Layout

Clean map layout 100% optimized for readability on GPS. Be assured that on the GPS maps therefore are very well readable. As for desktop use the layout has too much contrast, there is a second layout optimized for planning with Mapsource/Basecamp/Qlandkarte GT.

You can Improve the Maps!!

These maps are based on the freely available wikipedia like Openstreetmap Map Database. You should consider uploading your GPS tracks to openstreetmap and/or help out if you find errors or missing data. There is a short introduction here listing the most relevant links to get you startet: Participate

Who can make use of the maps?

The maps offered here are of course, currently primarily used by Garmin GPS users, but you don't need to have a Garmin GPS to use them. Qlandkarte GT an opensource and freely available Map Viewer can display them in all their pride, and also if not owning a Garmin GPS or buying maps from Garmin you can install the free Garmin Basecamp or Mapsource software and enjoy autorouting like you have not enjoyed before.

Need a map for Mountainbiking or Hiking?

Head over to https://openmtbmap.org and get it. Whereas the Velomap showss non paved tracks and trails in very subtle colors, on the openmtbmap you can see difficulty gradings both for Up- and Downhill. Also mtb and hikingroutes are prominently shown.

Just a quick note - now the OpenMTBmap features a winter layout for winter sports - it was better this way then integrating it into the hiking layout.

And if you need a Garmin Oregon 700 or Etrex 35 touch - amazon.de has them heavily discounted today for Black Friday. That's pretty rare to find them that cheap. Edge 520 is also really cheap - but I don't recommend it to be used with maps - it's simply too slow (edge 530/830/1030 are not on offer). If so the edge explore is also pretty cheap - it's better than the 520 Plus and for using maps it's pretty fine too. It's main problem - no compass/altimeter.

Since 30. October there is finally a new version of Basecamp 4.7.1 available - which includes an updated MapInstall 4.2.1 for Windows - which fixes sending .img format maps to devices.

For MacOSx the newest MapInstall version - 4.3.2 was fixed already much longer ago - though if you don't need to update to Basecamp 4.8.x on Mac OSx due to 32 bit support dropped in macOS Catalina - there is no reason to upgrade either. Basecamp 4.8.4 still runs unstable if you don't use English as language (you can set the language in Basecamp preferences). I don't know yet if the newest 4.8.6 runs stable in all languages. MapInstall 4.3.2 seems pretty stable - but very occasionally errors have been reported. In my opinion don't let Garmin Basecamp 4.6.2 missing Catalina support stop you from upgrading to Catalina. Basecamp 4.8.6 should be good enough.

For both Basecamp 4.7.1 (Windows) and Basecamp 4.8.6 (macOS) the lost functions like google earth integration are not back. I guess most people will not notice the missing functions however.

I have often heard complaints of people that gmapsupp.img maps do not show in Basecamp. I still think usually this makes no sense - but with MapInstall fixed now - I changed the gmapsupp.img downloads to show by default in Basecamp if device connected. Maps sent via MapInstall/Mapsource by default are not loaded into Basecamp.

You can still change that of course by running the .bat scripts included in the gmapsupp.img downloads.

Also often people were confused that in the map download lists - the non unicode section only included those countries - which by default are unicode. I've now changed this that countries like Germany show everywhere in the local language downloads - even though of course the map download is always latin1 - so non Unicode. At the same time I've noticed that sometimes I forgot to add countries to download lists (especially on VeloMap). E.g. Armenia, Laos, Liberia were missing from some lists.

Lastly - the windows installer for Germany finally broke the 2GB limit. The installers for France, Africa continent and Russia were also close to breaking the 2GB limit. I don't want to offer these countries as 2 downloads - so I've updated the installer to accept sizes over 2GB. However this causes the installer not to be extractable anymore with 7zip. Therefore I am now creating a new zipped version of those countries for Linux users. Also of course some bugs in the map creation got fixed.

This winter I will include nordic skiing trails into the hiking layout of the maps. The other layouts will not show nordic skiing trails (the thing is that nordic skiing trails usually but not always use normal trails/tracks - so they can be confusing if you are not on nordic skis).

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